The growth of communication systems has resulted in increased system capacity and flexibility. Early cellular communication systems provided services using circuit-switched technologies. Now, however, mobile calls may be routed in a circuit-switched fashion, a packet-switched fashion, or some hybrid thereof. Moreover, it has become increasingly desirable to couple and integrate mobile cellular telephone networks, for instance a GSM network, to Internet protocol (IP) networks for call routing purposes. The routing of voice calls over IP networks is frequently termed “voice over IP” (VoIP).
Packet-switched technology, which may be connection-oriented (e.g., X.25) or “connectionless” as in IP, does not require the set-up and tear-down of a physical connection as in circuit-switched technology. A connectionless packet-switched network distributes the routing functions to multiple routing sites, thereby avoiding possible traffic bottlenecks that could occur when using a central switching hub. Data is “packetized” with the appropriate end-system addressing and then transmitted in independent units along the data path. Intermediate systems, sometimes called “routers,” are stationed between the communicating end-systems to make decisions about the most appropriate route to take on a per packet basis.
In packet data communication schemes, access to the system is provided on a random basis using a packet data scheduler disposed in the fixed part of the system. Once a mobile station has made a successful random access, and is therefore active, it is scheduled by the system to transfer packets on a radio channel. The scheduling of transmission resources by the system for the active mobile station provides the mobile station with a reserved access, as opposed to a random access. The scheduling can be carried out on basis of the mobile's Quality of Service (QoS) or other widely known methods. With the introduction of new services or applications over packet data systems, for example real time (RT) services such as VoIP, there will be a large variety of Quality of Service (QoS) demands on the network. Certain users, for example, those utilizing real time voice applications will have a very high demand for the availability of transmission resources, whereas users, for example, who transmit short messages or electronic mail, will be satisfied with a lower availability of transmission resources.
As more and more mobile subscribers use packet data service through their mobile devices, i.e. browsing Internet, and downloading files, there is a need for the users to know the actual data throughput (amount of data) that they have experienced either everyday or upon request. This information not only provides data usage information to the end users but also serves as an index for mobile subscribers to understand the data activity periodically, which may trigger upgrading to another level of service, i.e. higher data rate, for heavy data usage subscribers. Also letting the users know their data throughput allows them to have some evidence for complaining to their service provider if their average rate does not meet the rate of the service they subscribe to.
Therefore, there is a need in the prior art for a method and system that provides packet data throughput information on a per user basis.